Deadlands: Biding Our Time for a Better Yesteryear

Campaign that includes the Flood and other elements

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Westward Bound!

Welcome to Deadlands: Reloaded, and the Wierd West. The year is 1879. This is the realm of the future, where the competing forces of Hellstrome Industries and Smith & Robards’ duel it out over technologies for the new “superfuel”, a mineral coal formation called Ghost Rock. The best source for Ghost Rock is in the Maze, which is a labyrinth of canals that California became after the Great Quake of ‘68.

The Civil War has been raging for 20 years, now in a state of armistice. The war could turn hot, though, at any moment thanks to the second war in North America, the Great Rail Wars. The many rail giants, including Hellstrome Industries’ Wasatch Line, the Union Blue, the Iron Dragon, and the Bayou Vermillion, are fighting a shooting war to link the two coasts in a single rail line. Because each rail line uses different gague track, whomever completes it will have every competitive advantage in the distribution of Ghost Rock, and whichever nation’s line goes first will have command over the hugely powerful Infernal Devices and Elixirs that can be produced by the new science.

Behind the scenes, things are stranger. It’s said there are horrors lurking where wise men don’t go. The governments don’t speak of it, but each has its own force to try to “keep the peace” (which means keep the horrors a secret and under control). The Union fields the Agency (and at one point hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency for the job), and the Confederacy fields the Texas Rangers. Both groups are collectively called the Men in Black Trenchcoats. Even stranger are the people with power over those forces – the Indian Shaman, the Blessed preacher, and some even stranger and more macabre types. The Asiatic martial artist will sometimes manifest incredible powers they call “breath control” or “life mastery”, but which look more like being superhuman fighting machines. Then there are the Hucksters, people who are believed to consort with the devil and duel him in a game of cards every time they cast a spell.

But at the moment, none of that is important. What is important is your next paycheck. See the Adventure Log for more information about the potential pay opportunity.

New Rules

There are a number of new rules systems being used in this game. This Wiki will present them as I get to them. Many of the changes are in the realm of supernatural forces.

Blessed Faith: Some refinements of the miracles and codes of conduct followed by the Blessed.

Revised Mad Science: Nobody really calls them “new scientists”, do they? The system presented in Deadlands: Reloaded is a good one and helps to make mad scientists not have to spend a lot of money in order to get their Powers. It also behaves nothing at all like how you’d expect a gizmoteer or inventor to behave. This fixes that, and re-instates the money cost that has always plagued Mad Scientists since the days of the first edition.